Catching U Up!

We have had a full couple of months. Spring is here in full. Warmth has permeated everything and we still have the wonderful cool nights… but warm is king right now. The smells of spring are wonderful and waking up to the birdsong is heavenly… even if 2 hours earlier the Umass party goers were still in the high gear in their raucous romps through the neighborhood (earplugs) Gene Wallace has been living with us for a few months while she gets the weight up on her new baby girl Amani Pearl (hey that rhymes). It has been nice seeing Gene and catching up and also I have to admit it is sooooo nice having an infant in the house to hold…

Tomorrow Sunday is the kid’s last day of their break which started off in Maine on the beach for a few days with Britt. They have been … well growing. Isaiah is moody and spends a lot of time listening to story tapes… lost in his own little world. He is now in travel soccer and has games all over this section of MA. And Aman has been showing a little interest in playing… vamos a ver. Aman sees Isaiah’s moodiness as his cue to go play happily by himself most times and has taken up drawing as his main creative outlet.

Britt and Jamal worked for days to finish the first of a couple videos about Fit Together the program she started for Service Net. If you want to check it out go to: Fit_Together_Website . Britt went down a few weekends ago to NYC to support Ericka and Jennifer (my cousin) in their running a half marathon. Britt ended up participating… she walked the first 10 miles then ran the last three!!! One of the images here is of 5 women. From left to right is unknown, Ericka, Katherine Switzer, Jennifer and Britt.

Katherine Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon that had been exclusively men til the 70s or so. She disguised herself, registered and ran almost the whole thing before someone saw that she was a she and they physically forced her from the race.

I have been doing a lot of cool projects at work that are sort of wrapping up now and have a lot of nit picky detail work to do for the next few weeks that I am not too excited about (at least the skate park is open for my lunch time escapes). I am also beginning training for a mini triathlon in early July. It will be ½ mile swim, 14 mile bike, 3 mile run… should be interesting… especially since Alf will be running it (thank God he is not in my age bracket!!!). I also played three of my songs at Amherst College arts night for about 70 people and then choked severely singing Allah’u’abha for about 100 folks at the first day of Ridvan celebration last Monday. Oh well little by little I will get over this insane nervousness at being in front of a group of people with a guitar!

The Alschulers are in Ireland for the week sightseeing and visiting a college friend of Ericka’s. We really miss them.

Anyway, I am beat at the moment. We had a pretty amazing romp up to the top of one of the peaks at Mt. Tom with Aman’s friend Ethan and his dad Matt. This involved the usual birch jumping, climbing, eating, hiding, trimming, throwing, yelling, etc…What a great day. Here are some of the images.